


Blood of Eden

by abi z (azephirin)



Category: Social Network (2010)
Genre: Additional Warnings Apply, Ambiguous Relationships, Awkwardness, Cuddling and Snuggling, Dysfunctional Relationships, F/M, Frottage, Future Fic, Implied Relationships, Loneliness, New York City, POV Outsider, Prostitution, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-14
Updated: 2011-09-14
Packaged: 2017-10-23 18:27:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/253511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/azephirin/pseuds/abi%20z
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Did I dream this belief or did I believe this dream?</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blood of Eden

**Author's Note:**

> I posted this locked a while ago, and it occurred to me that there's no real reason to keep it that way. So, have 3000 words of weirdo OFC hookerfic with bonus incest overtones! What, I was in _Supernatural_ fandom for a long time. I imagine this story to take place shortly after the settlement, with Eduardo rich and pyrrhically victorious and adrift. PS, [](http://ninhursag.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**ninhursag**](http://ninhursag.dreamwidth.org/) is greatly to blame. Just so everyone knows.
> 
>  **Disclaimer:** To the extent that any of these characters are real people, this story depicts them as they are fictitiously portrayed in Aaron Sorkin and David Fincher's ~~RPF 'verse~~ movie _The Social Network_. Apologies to Peter Gabriel for dragging him into this via the "[title](http://lyrics.wikia.com/Peter_Gabriel:Blood_Of_Eden), cut text ("[Secret World](http://lyrics.wikia.com/Peter_Gabriel:Secret_World)"), and summary ("[I Grieve](http://lyrics.wikia.com/Peter_Gabriel:I_Grieve)").

He’d asked for a specific appearance, which was not in itself unusual, nor were the particulars of his request: tall, straight dark hair, olive skin, mid to late twenties. Clothing-wise, he wanted a T-shirt and either jeans or—to Marissa’s surprise—sweatpants. She read on: _like somebody might sleep in_. That made a certain amount of sense. A lot of guys wanted the girl next door.

She wasn’t going to wear sweatpants on the subway, though—unless you were sick or coming back from the gym, there was just no excuse for that. Marissa found a pair of 7 jeans, nicely fitting but not too tight, a baby-doll T-shirt from the Gap, and, after some deliberation, a pair of Converse All-Stars. She’d never worn them to meet a client before, and it was a little bit of a gamble, but, given the sweatpants, Marissa was pretty sure she was right.

The address was the Ansonia, where Marissa had been a couple of times before and where she thought it would be interesting to go again—it was a cool old building filled with nooks and crannies, and she bet no two units were the same. If nothing else, it would be fun to see the apartment.

On the 2, it wasn’t a bad ride from Clark Street, and she went inside and asked the doorman for 17D, as the scheduler’s email had noted. “Marissa?” the man said, and she nodded. “You can go right up. Have a good evening.”

“You too,” she said, and smiled, because it never hurt to be friendly to a doorman.

With a client, you never knew exactly what to expect. They could be lonely old men; they could be lonely young men; they could be men who weren’t lonely at all but just wanted to have a good time with a pretty girl. They could be gracious; they could be rude; they could try to be gracious but still be rude. Their desires could be shocking bizarre or shockingly conventional. This address and choice of agency spoke of money, but that didn’t say much, either: it could be earned, it could be inherited, it could be stolen, it could be borrowed. You never knew.

The man who answered the door was tall, dark-haired, good-looking, about Marissa’s age. Not a surprise, exactly, but not something to be necessarily expected, either. Going on appearance, he wasn’t somebody who would have to pay for it, but a lot of clients weren’t—they often had their reasons, whatever they were. The man was, she noticed, a visual match for the description he’d asked for, only male. Maybe a narcissist, then. A lot of men wanted to fuck themselves, although usually they hired another man for that.

“Hi,” he said, slightly uncertainly, and opened the door the rest of the way to let her in. Either a first-timer, then, or terminally shy, or both.

“Hi,” she said, and smiled as nonthreateningly as she could. “I’m Marissa.”

“Ed—” he started, and then stopped. He paused, then said, almost to himself, “No, you’ll need to know my real name,” and added, “Eduardo.”

“Hello, Eduardo,” Marissa said. “I hope my clothes are OK. Forgive me, but I just couldn’t wear sweatpants in public.”

Unexpectedly, he laughed. “No, I don’t blame you. The jeans are fine.” He gave her a quick once-over. His voice was more ruminative when he went on, “She would never wear that T-shirt, though,” and Marissa wondered whether he knew he’d spoken out loud.

“I can change if you have something you’d prefer.”

“Do you mind?” he asked, and it sounded like a real question.

“Not at all. Whatever you’d like.”

He disappeared into another room, and Marissa took a moment to glance around the living room. It was big, twenty by twenty at least, with a city view worth about a million on its own. Despite the building’s Beaux-Arts exterior, the apartment was all sleek modern lines, track lighting, and contemporary furniture; Marissa was also pretty sure that was an original Klee on the wall. Her grandmother would have been dead jealous, not that Marissa ever planned on telling Memère that she’d been here or, God knew, why. Marissa was supposed to be in New York selling her poetry and short fiction to well-regarded literary reviews, not her body to the highest bidder.

He—Eduardo, she repeated to herself, since for some reason he’d thought it was important to tell her that—returned with a rolled-up gray T-shirt that looked like the sort of thing she’d wear to work out. Maybe she should have gone with the sweatpants after all, standards be damned.

He handed her the shirt. “The bathroom’s the first door on the right. You can change in there.” Marissa raised an eyebrow: That direction, certainly, was nonstandard. He blushed a little—he really was cute, Marissa thought—and couldn’t quite meet her eyes. “It wouldn’t— It would be weird,” he said.

“Alright,” Marissa said, because he was the one paying for this, whatever this was. She went in the bathroom, debated with herself for a moment whether to close the door, and settled for cracking it about half an inch, just in case he had something in mind.

The bathroom was as stylish and contemporary as the rest for the apartment, with a large glassed-in bathtub and marble around the sink. Marissa thought of her old claw-footed tub—quaint and admittedly pretty, but ancient and impractical—with its jerry-rigged shower, and sighed with envy. She took off the Gap shirt and put on the gray one—much too large for her, and emblazoned with a faded Harvard logo. She wondered whether he’d gone there or whether he was just trying to make it look like he had. And he apparently hadn't had anything in mind beyond the change in T-shirts, because the door stayed where it was. When Marissa emerged, Eduardo was sitting on the Danish Modern sofa, all long limbs and nervousness.

“Better?” Marissa asked, and he nodded without quite looking at her. When he didn’t say anything, she went on, delicately, “Is there anything you’d like me to do?”

He still didn’t look at her; his gaze seemed fixed on the picture window as he stared out across Manhattan. He took a breath and seemed on the verge of saying something, but then he let it out and didn’t speak. Another few moments passed, and Marissa took a seat next to him on the couch, a few inches away, close enough to feel private and intimate but not quite near enough to be touching. “What is it, baby?” she asked, pitching her voice soft, comforting. “Just tell me what it is, and we’ll go from there.”

Eduardo was still looking out at the glitter of the skyline after dark as he said, “Querido.”

“I’m sorry?”

“It should be _querido_ ,” he said quietly. “Or _amor_. Or _anjo_.”

“Spanish?” she asked, but, no, _angel_ was _ángel_ , not _anjo_ , in Spanish. Like Los Angeles.

He shook his head, still looking away from her. “Portuguese.”

The Converse had worked, so Marissa gambled again. She laid her hand over one of his and said, still softly, “What is it, _querido_?”

He shuddered and closed his eyes, and the shirt might have been wrong, but her gambles were two for two.

She moved closer, enough to touch now, and put her arm around him. “What is it, _anjo_? You can tell me.”

He took another breath, and this one was audibly uneven. He dropped his head and said, “I just want to go to bed.”

He was trembling, just a little. “OK,” she said, and kissed his shoulder. “OK, _querido_. Come on, come to bed.”

Eduardo still didn’t look at her as he led her into the room where he’d gone to get the Harvard T-shirt. The bedroom was a little less ostentatiously modern than the living room, with a Chinese-style painting of dragonflies and a flowering tree over the bed. The room's proportions were considerably smaller than the main room, almost cozy, though it was still, in itself, about the size of Marissa’s entire apartment.

She unlaced and removed the Converse, and was reaching to take off the T-shirt when Eduardo shook his head. “No. No. Keep it on. Please.”

Marissa nodded and sat down on the edge of the bed, wondering whether this was his kink or whether she didn’t meet his aesthetic expectations. She wasn’t sure whether to be insulted: she knew that she objectively had an attractive body—she’d danced for years and still took classes when she could—and her breasts weren’t enormous but they were real and well-shaped. But she stayed quiet—he seemed to know what he wanted, even if he wouldn’t or couldn’t quite tell her what it was, and she waited for direction.

He set his cufflinks on the dresser, then turned his back as he unbuttoned his pristine white oxford shirt. He laid it carefully over the back of a chair, then paused, still facing away from her, as if deciding what to do next. He’d been wearing an undershirt beneath the oxford, and he didn’t take off that or his pants.

“Would you turn on that lamp, please?” he asked, still without turning around.

There was a small lamp on the bedside table; Marissa turned it on, and Eduardo went over to the doorway and flipped the lightswitch to kill the overhead. The lamplight was a gentle early-evening yellow, and Marissa took another gamble and turned down the bedclothes, moving back to sit against the headboard with her feet tucked underneath the linens.

Eduardo seemed to come to a decision then, and he stripped off the undershirt—but no more—and got in bed. He settled on his side, though, facing away from her once again, and Marissa wondered where the hell she was supposed to be going with this.

“Turn off the light, please,” he said, so she did, cloaking the room in mostly-darkness, and moved to lie down. The sheets were a heavy, silky cotton, and for a moment Marissa just enjoyed how nice they felt against her exposed arms. (They would have felt even nicer if she’d been completely naked, but if she’d been completely naked, she’d probably have needed to keep her mind on other things besides how nice the sheets felt.) “Take—” he started, then cut himself off.

She reached forward to put her hand on his shoulder, and he shuddered again. “Take what, _amor_?” she asked.

“That’s not it, that’s not right,” he muttered, and Marissa wasn’t sure where she’d gone wrong, but he didn’t explain any further. “Take—take the shirt off. Please.”

She was, she decided, mildly offended that he apparently didn’t think she met whatever his standards were (plus it was a little clumsy to take off a T-shirt when you were lying in bed), but whatever—he was paying. She managed to wriggle out of it, then asked, “Bra too?”

“Yes,” he whispered. “Please.”

She dropped both on the floor, then moved closer to settle an arm over him. “Is this what you want, _querido_?”

“Yeah,” he answered in that same whisper, but then added a beat later, “Kiss me. Please.”

Marissa nudged him onto his back and leaned down to kiss him. He kissed back almost desperately, his fingers tangling and tightening in her hair, and he breathed out, “Julie.”

 _Now we’re getting somewhere,_ Marissa thought. “Is that who you want me to be, _anjo_? Do you want me to be your Julie?”

“Yeah,” he said, and his voice broke on the syllable. “Yeah, I do.”

She kissed him again and stroked his hair back from his forehead. “OK, _querido_ , OK. Shhhh, it’s OK. Your Julie is here.”

“Yeah,” he said again, in that same broken whisper. “Yeah, you are.”

“Don’t cry, love,” Marissa said, forgetting to use the Portuguese endearment, but he didn’t seem to care. She kissed his eyelids, and he took an unsteady breath. “Don’t cry. It’s OK.”

He rolled them over, and Marissa thought, _OK, here we go,_ but once she was on her back, all he did was curl himself small enough to fit his head under her chin. (It was awkward—she was tall but not as tall as he was—but he seemed to really want it to work.) She wrapped her arms around him, and he nestled into her—Marissa couldn’t figure out why it unnerved her a little until she realized that it was weirdly childlike, like a little boy fitting himself into his mother’s embrace. Except that his fingers were lightly circling around and over her nipple, and she really really hoped he hadn’t done that with his mother. Also, if they were going to do the adult-baby thing, she would have preferred knowing that ahead of time—not to mention, negotiating the higher rate that accompanied an unconventional kink like that. But that didn’t seem to be his direction, either. Eduardo just lay there, tucked up against her, making her nipple harden against his fingertips but not going any further than that. It did feel good, at least. She stroked his shoulders and his back—his skin was smooth and warm, and he had the kind of muscle definition that she was sorry she hadn’t gotten a chance to see in good light. He murmured, “Julie,” again, and Marissa murmured back, “Yes, _anjo_?” He didn’t answer, though—her reply had either been enough or it couldn’t be enough.

It was difficult not to get sleepy, lying here like this, but just when Marissa was afraid she couldn’t stay awake much longer, Eduardo moved to put his mouth on her nipple. Oh, God, maybe she **was** supposed to be his mother—except he was using tongue and lips and a little bit of teeth, like you did with a lover and not (Marissa fervently hoped) with a mother. She tried to put that out of her mind, because this felt good, too—not rough, not demanding, but almost reverent. She sighed and spread her legs a little to cradle him between her hips, and she could feel him getting erect—but he still didn’t take it any further, just rocked against her gently, making little gasps and murmuring, “Julie,” again.

“Querido,” Marissa breathed out, and Eduardo shivered. She ran her fingers through his hair and pulled him up for another kiss; he went willingly, and when she wrapped her legs around him, he whimpered and thrust down harder.

She moved her hand down to rub the line of his cock, but he pulled away. “No,” he whispered. “Just like this. Like how we always…”

“OK, Eduardo, _amor_ ,” Marissa said softly. “Just like always.”

All he wanted to do, it seemed, was kiss and thrust shallowly against her—it was pleasant-feeling, sweet and a little junior-high-ish. Maybe Julie had been his wife, a high-school sweetheart, and this was how their relationship had started, tentative and innocent and a little furtive. It wasn’t difficult to move with him, to keep kissing him until his hips jerked and he buried his face in her neck and said, “Julie,” in a broken moan.

He lay there on top of her for a few minutes, catching his breath while Marissa’s hands kept making slow paths across his body. She kissed his temple, carded her fingers through his hair, and finally Eduardo moved off her to kick off his pants and boxers and curl up on his side.

This part, at least, had been in the email, and Marissa turned to wrap her arms around him from behind. _Stay until client falls asleep; money in envelope on kitchen counter; door will lock behind you_. Marissa kissed the back of his neck and said, “Go to sleep, _querido_ ,” as quietly as she could.

“OK,” Eduardo whispered back. “Eu te amo, Julinha.”

It took him less than five minutes to fall asleep.

Marissa waited a few more minutes, just to make sure; then she extracted herself carefully, retracting her arms before slowly uncoiling from where she had fit herself against his back. He didn’t move, his muscles didn’t tense, and his breathing didn’t change—really asleep, then. She had to fumble for her shoes, her bra, and the Harvard shirt; she left the T-shirt in the laundry hamper in the corner, closed the bedroom door noiselessly, and found her own T-shirt back in the living room.

The envelope was on the counter as promised, marked with an “M” in blue ink: three hours at her standard rate, plus a good tip and cab fare, although it was early enough that she’d just take the subway again. Considerably more than she would have expected for a job like this. She tucked it into her bag, put on her shoes, and was about to leave when a picture on one of the end tables caught her eye.

It was Eduardo with a tall, slender woman about his own age. They were standing on the Brooklyn Bridge, with the East River wind blowing the woman’s loose dark hair into a corona around her face. She shared Eduardo’s unusual and striking features, the huge dark eyes, prominent nose, full lips—she was obviously a sister, not a girlfriend or wife, and hers was the only human likeness in this room.

Marissa turned off the living room light, closed the door behind her, and stood in the common hallway for a moment as she let out her breath and got her bearings.

It was only later, on the subway for the long stretch between 72nd and Times Square, that Marissa realized she was crying.


End file.
